Greg Wolfe on The MA

"An excellent example of a group blog, a true community of like-minded but highly individual writers. . . . Topics range from the state of Christian publishing to craft issues to lyrical meditations on writing as a spiritual discipline."

GREGORY WOLFE in Christianity Today,
March 2008

WELCOME

The Master's Artist is a group blog for writers united by the blood of Christ and a love for language. We come from different backgrounds, have different theological outlooks, and are interested in a wide variety of genres and artforms. The opinions expressed belong to their authors alone -- and you're welcome to share yours.

April 2012

April 18, 2012

On Christmas Day 1886, a young man of 18 listened to the choir in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris sing vespers – and was converted on the spot. He became a devout Catholic, and remained a devout Catholic until he died in 1955 at the age of 86.

Paul Claudel also wrote poetry, a special kind of poetry called the “verset,” lines of lyrical prose influenced by the Latin Vulgate Bible and Walt Whitman. He had a major impact on the development of French poetry in the 20th century. He also served in the French diplomatic corps, including as ambassador to the United States from 1928 to 1933.

After the fall of France in 1940 to Nazi Germany and the establishment of the Vichy government, many thought he had become a Nazi sympathizer – primarily because of his conservative views. He wasn’t at all; he was a traditional conservative, much like T.S. Eliot in both his religious and political views.

I happened upon one of Claudel’s poems in the March issue (the “Translation issue”) of Poetry Magazine. The poem, translated by Jonathan Monroe Geltner, is entitled “The Day of Gifts,” and a few lines of the translation give a sense of Claudel’s poetry:

…If what you need, Lord, are virgins, if what you need are brave men beneath your standard;If there are people for whom to be Christian words alone would not suffice,But who know rather that only in stirring themselves to chase after You is there any life,Well then there’s Dominic and Francis, Saint Lawrence and Saint Cecilia and plenty more!But if by chance You should have need of a lazy and imbecilic bore,If a prideful coward could prove useful to you, or perhaps a soiled Ingrate,Or the sort of man whose hard heart shows up in a hard face—Well, anyway, You didn’t come just to save the just but that other type That abounds,And if, miraculously, You run out of them elsewhere…Lord, I’m Still around…

You can read the entire poem at Poetry.org. (It’s difficult to find Claudel’s works in English, although there is a web site -in French - devoted to his works.)

Geltner, in his translator’s note, says Claudel’s charm lies in his “enormous conviction and consistency, while remaining capable of sudden turns and unexpected formulations of ancient rites and sentiments.” The entry on Wikipedia is slightly more effusive, and says “he used scenes of passionate, obsessive human love to convey with great power God's infinite love for humanity.” It is that hope in God that permeates his poetry and his life, and he once said that “there is something sadder to lose than life – the reason for living; sadder than to lose one's possessions is to lose one's hope.”

Claudel retained that hope throughout his life.he speaks with enormous conviction and consistency, while remaining capable of sudden turns and unexpected formulations of ancient ideas and sentiments.

April 12, 2012

You probably don't know this, but today is The First Annual International Phrase-a-Palooza. (We'll call it Phrase Day for short.) The reason you probably don't know this is because I just made it up. But that doesn't make Phrase Day any less a thing. Someone has to make these holidays up, and it might as well be me.

April 04, 2012

We don’t read or teach much about poet Sidney Lanier (1842-1881) today, but he ranks with Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Herman Melville for the poets who contributed significantly to the making of 19th century American poetry. A native of Georgia, he fought for the South in the Civil War, and landed in a Union prison camp as a result – where he contracted the tuberculosis that would eventually kill him.

He’s known for a number of poems, including “The Symphony,” in which he wrote a part for each instrument. He loved music; it had been a major part of his childhood and music was a major influence on his poems. The year before he died, he published a study entitled The Science of English Verse, which “explored the connections between musical notation and meter in poetry.”

In his last days, he was a lecturer and faculty member at Johns Hopkins University, where he taught the English novelists, Shakespeare, the Elizabethan sonnets, Chaucer, and the Anglo-Saxon poets. A series of lectures entitled The English Novel was published posthumously. He died at age 39, and was buried in Baltimore.

This poem, “A Ballad of Trees and the Master,” was published after his death. It is the story of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, alone, about to be betrayed, about to be forsaken. It seems especially appropriate for Holy Week.

A Ballad of Trees and the Master

Into the woods my Master went,Clean forspent, forspent.Into the woods my Master came,Forspent with love and shame.But the olives they were not blind to Him,The little gray leaves were kind to Him:The thorn-tree had a mind to HimWhen into the woods He came.

Out of the woods my Master went,And He was well content.Out of the woods my Master came,Content with death and shame.When Death and Shame would woo Him last,From under the trees they drew Him last:'Twas on a tree they slew Him -- lastWhen out of the woods He came.

The Poetry Foundation has a critical essay about Lanier, and Poetry Reincarnations has published an animated version of this poem:

April 02, 2012

This week I will be cleaning my room and car in preparation for Maundy Thursday. We will attend Maundy Thursday service and have communion with our Saint Philip AME family. During the week Selah and I will make eggs treats (easter eggs, cupcake eggs, deviled eggs) for the Easter baskets. It's a great way to talk about what "new life" means since eggs are a symbol of that. Of course I watching The Sound of Music don't know why, but I do. lol And I will be writing more poems, good or bad. What will you be doing this Holy Week?